If one Dave Hause story on a Monday is good, two mush be outstanding, right? Right!

Earlier today, we told you that the singer/songwriter is releasing a new EP, September Haze, this coming Thursday (November 1st). Well, you can now get a taste of what’s to come, by way of a new track called “Lemon Hill.” The track is a reference to the Philadelphia park where Hause would drink as a kid and would walk to reflect as he got sober a few years ago. Check out the lyric video below.

September Haze will be available digitally in a couple days. Pre-orders are available here. It’s the first Hause solo release since his early 2017 sophomore full-length, Bury Me In Philly.

Frank Turner has had a bit of a mutual love affair with the greater Boston area over the last handful of years. While his first show inside the city limits didn’t occur until February 2010 – roughly six years after his first-ever show as a solo performer and three years after his first US show which happened in San Antonio of all places – the years since have found the Wessex boy turning Boston into his North American home, with area’s bars and clubs and storage lockups serving as a virtual basecamp for his touring operation on this side of the Atlantic. There’s been obvious support from the likes of local heroes Dropkick Murphys over the years – including lengthy tours both Stateside and abroad – but Turner and his band, the Sleeping Souls, have also garnered a fair amount of radio play from the city’s holdover alternative and independent stations and won over crowds the old fashioned way: by playing their asses off.

Traditionally speaking, Boston, you see, prefers its musicians and its athletes to share a few overlapping characteristics. If you’re viewed a tough, scrappy, hard-worker who may not necessarily have been born with the most virtuosic capabilities but through blood, sweat and tears have carved out a spot for yourself, you’ll do alright here. (Not having an abundance of melanin helps as well, but that’s a conversation for another time and platform.) And so it was a little confusing to see only a couple of Boston dates on the initial list of North American dates in support of Turner’s new album, Be More Kind. Both dates were at Royale, a thousand-ish capacity club that is a great venue, however it’s much smaller than venues like House of Blues and, of course, the Agganis Areana that Turner has headlined in past runs through the city. And while Lucero and The Menzingers were listed as openers for the bulk of the month-long tour, neither were slated to appear in Boston. Hi-jinks, it seemed, were afoot. Within a few days, however, a bigger picture appeared. Tickets to the first two sold out in mere moments, and were quickly joined by two more shows, which also sold out quickly, and finally by two more shows, all without openers announced, meaning that Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls would be headlining the same venue six times in a week. All of a sudden, we had ourselves a big deal on our hands.

Dying Scene have had the privilege of covering a bunch of Frank Turner shows over the years, and night four of this six-night run (which turned into a seven-night run as Turner played a benefit show for the Claddagh Fund at one of Dropkick Murphys’ founder Ken Casey’s new dining establishments on July 3rd) marked yours truly’s seventh time shooting Turner locally at venues ranging from a record store to a college hockey arena to a giant outdoor festival, and while it’s generally hyperbole state that a show was the best of a particular bunch, I’ll be damned if this one wasn’t right up there. The varied setlist covered all seven of Turner’s full-length studio albums (pretty sure I’d never heard “Journey Of The Magi” off 2009’s Poetry Of The Deed live before) as well as the 2010 Rock & Roll EP (definitely sure I’d never heard “Pass It Along” live before). Turner is able to change at a moments notice from being the solo, folk-punk troubadour persona that has long been his bread and butter, to the consummate showman, singing and dancing in non-stop, high-energy fashion, including a lap around the entire venue balcony during the show-closing “Four Simple Words.” Hell, he even got opener Dave Hause to play along, as the latter crowd-surfed his way around the venue as though it were a punk rock baseball diamond during fan favorite “If Ever I Stray” (see the last photo above for proof).

Oh and as was mentioned briefly above, Dave Hause and his band, The Mermaid, were added as opener to this show after the sell-out had been announced (other shows featured support spots from some combination of Speedy Ortiz, The Homeless Gospel Choir, Jeff Rosenstock, Restorations, Tim Barry, Hotelier, War On Women, Kevin Devine and Trapper Schoepp, making each of the six shows a truly unique experience). Hause and his brother/musical counterpart Tim were in town for a stripped down show at Boston’s new City Winery establishment during the altter stages of their tour with Northcote earlier this month. While we enjoyed the hell out of that experience, the elder Hause is masterful at commanding an audience and a full band at a sweaty punk rock show, and this particular band has turned itself into quite a force that’s able to seemingly effortlessly pull off the myriad sounds that have been woven into the Dave Hause solo catalog – yes, that’s Kayleigh Goldsworthy on melodica above – particularly on its latest entry, last year’s Bury Me In Philly. It was a disorientingly early set – Royale turns into a dance club at 10pm, prompting a hard 9:30 curfew, but the dynamic Hause fired the crowd up the way few others can. (Plus, his merch girl was pretty cute!)

After what was, by all accounts, a pretty successful year on the road with a new band (The Mermaid) following the release of his latest solo album, the redemptive, triumphant Bury Me In Philly, Dave Hause had been planning on scaling things down a little bit for 2018, both to celebrate newly married life and to work on new material. As fate would have it, things don’t always go as plan. Hause and his band played a bunch of European shows with his longtime comrade Brian Fallon earlier this year, and he and his musical – and real-life – brother have played a handful of Canadian and, now, US shows alongside the likes of the Drew Thomson Foundation and, more recently, Northcote. The latter tour rolled through Boston’s somewhat newly-opened City Winery last Tuesday, where they plied their mostly-acoustic wares in front of a house that mostly packed the upscale venue in spite of relatively little advance fanfare.

If you’re not familiar with the City Winery concept, it can be a little bit of a shock to the system if you’re used to sweaty basement clubs or even mid-sized theater shows. To start, you take your seat at one of four rows of family-style tables run perpendicular to the spacious stage, and an ample, attentive waitstaff checks in with you regularly, ready to bring you everything to a $64 bottle of 2014 Pinot Noir from New Zealand to a variety of cheeses and charcuterie board served on an individual cutting board to, chicken coq au vin, the latter of which I thought existed only in places Anthony Bourdain traveled (rest in peace). In spite of the fact that you’re largely looking over your left or right shoulder depending on which side of the table you’re seated at, sight lines are pretty solid and the sound is crystal clear. This is not the rebirth of The Rat, my friends, but that’s okay, because sometimes you’re in your late-30s and have a day job and a kid and don’t want to get your ass kicked in a pit on a Tuesday night. (Plus, there’s perhaps some level of comedic value in seeing a room full of denin-jacketed punks eating roasted Brussles Sprouts singing along to “Dirty Fucker.”)

Anyway, the show’s promoters kept things lean. Northcote (Canadian singer/songwriter Matt Good – not to be confused Canadian singer/songwriter Matthew Good) kicked things off, appearing as a duo with the acoustic-wielding Good supported by longtime collaborator Steven McGillivray on the electric. Like many in the crowd (based on my informal poll), yours truly’s introduction to Northcote in a live setting was his opening slot on Hause’s 2014 tour in support of Devour, or the subsequent dates he played with Gaslight Anthem as they wound down the Get Hurt touring cycle. Good cuts an imposing figure, with the Viking-esque long red hair and beard to match somewhat offset by his denim-and-flannel attire. Good is a criminally underrated songwriter, having earned a good many stripes from a past life playing in punk and hardcore bands before branching out on his own. He’s also owner and operator of one of the premiere voices in all the scene, able to convey both tender sentiments and heart-breaking despair in a single bound. Case in point: Northcote closed his set with an ode to recently-departed Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison by covering the latter’s “My Backwards Walk.” The song is gut-wrenching in its original incarnation, but the gravity of the situation and the honesty in Good’s voice left barely a dry eye in the house.

The Brothers Hause followed, and dove right into a stripped-down rendition of Bury My In Philly‘s “Shaky Jesus.” We’ve obviously been pretty open about our love for Dave Hause’s post-Loved Ones career on these pages, but perhaps one of the most exciting, and unexpected, developments of the components there-in has been the emergence of his kid brother, Tim, as not only a perfect right-hand man, but a musical force in his own right. The same Tim that Dave reflected on wanting to spend more time with back on the 2011 track “Resolutions” has turned into a supremely talented guitar player (primarily adding electric textures to his brother’s acoustic rhythms), but split his time on the baby grand piano (told you it was a classy venue) and the mandolin as well, all while providing pitch perfect harmonies. Still riding the wave from their hometown Eagles’ Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots – on the eve of the now infamously canceled White House visit no less, the Hause brothers were in good, playful spirits for the duration of the set that drew not only from the elder Hause’s three solo albums, but his work with surf punk goofballs The All Brights and, of course, The Loved Ones. That good-nature was put to the test when a spontaneous, mid-set appearance by a background vacuum cleaner, ill-timed in the middle of perhaps Hause’s quietest stomach-punch of a song, “Bricks,” forced the consummate frontman to struggle to keep his composure. Once the vacuum cleaning portion of the evening’s festivities wound down, Hause also included an ode-to-a-departed-hero toward the end of his set, covering the late, great Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” though this one turned into a celebratory singalong as you might imagine.

Head below for our full photo gallery from the evening, and stay tuned for more from City Winery in the coming months, because we’re so fancy (you already know). But seriously; Cory Branan and Face To Face and Austin Lucas are playing in the near future, so we’ll be back for the Coq Au Vin soon!

Hey boys and girls, Jay Stone checking in with yet another year-end list. As has been the case every year I’ve done one of these exercises, I put way more than ten albums on my list this year, because honestly, cutting the list at ten leaves out too much awesome music. As you should also know, there’s a lot of awesome music that we don’t cover at Dying Scene, so I put some of that on the list as well. And if you scroll all the way down, there’s also a handy Spotify playlist that’ll keep you fired up for a couple hours. Check it all out below!

Singer Songwriter act Dave Hause is streaming his latest music video “The Flinch”. The song is from his latest album “Bury Me In Philly”. Watch it below.

In the video we get to see a young Dave Hause go from listening to a living room record player to playing a sold out rock show. The video, which was directed by Mike Gill, stars Dave Hause’s nephew Judah, as a young Hause and features live footage from Houses’ Free At Noon performance from earlier this year.

Dave will soon begin his tour with Beach Slang and Tiger Army. Check out the dates here.

Singer Songwriter act Dave Hause has just announced his North American tour dates for the rest of the summer and through beginning of December for a headlining tour with Beach Slang and Tiger Army. The run is in support of his most recent release Bury Me In Philly out via Rise Records.

Hause will begin with an appearance this Saturday July 19, 2017 at XpoNential Fest in Camden, NJ.

Brooklyn had the honor and privilege not only of catching frnkiero and the Patience on one of their first shows back in the States after a crippling bus accident almost claimed their lives in Australia, but also of the eclectic Dave Hause’s latest project, The Mermaid, on their debut touring circuit, last month – and Jersey Beat was there to document the sights, the sounds, and the smells of it all.

The Mermaid were the openers this tour, but, as everyone who has ever seen Hause perform in any capacity knows, he always steals the show. Hause had recently scaled back his high-energy performances both with The Loved Ones and as a solo artist with his excellent 2013 release, “Devour,” taken on the road with brother Tim as a mellow acoustic set. Now, Hause brings that bounce back with his latest touring band, The Mermaid, in support of Hause’s February release, “Bury Me In Philly.”

A Frank Iero crowd is not the easiest to win over (this fate has only, to the best of my knowledge, been flawlessly achieved by the charming Homeless Gospel Choir and, of course, the impossible not to love live Against Me!). However, The Brothers Hause and the rest of The Mermaid accomplished the task with ease – so much so that the ever-present fan line was just as excited to meet them as they were The Patience, and they all bought cds. I bought a “Dirty Fucker” shirt, which Hause had the entire crowd chanting as an informal fuck you to the current administration.

The album is amazing, and the songs translate incredibly live. And, as always, Dave threw in a jam for us Loved Ones fans in the audience, “C’mon, Kid.” The set went by way too quickly. Hause is always an electriifying performer and a damn fucking good songwriter. If you haven’t grabbed a copy of “Bury Me In Philly” yet, run, don’t walk, to your latest record store / download site and nab one now.

As incredible as The Mermaid were, Iero and The Patience were not to be outdone. Always engaging and fun to watch onstage, Iero has really come into his own as a frontman. These shows see him comfortable and engaged in between songs, trading laughs and sharing anecdotes with the audience. This album, “Parachutes,” informally the sophomore release to 2014’s “Stomachaches,” performed live with three quarters of this current lineup, is really, really good.

Don’t let the innocent faces of this young crowd fool you, kids: this band is punk through and through, and those kids are pretty damn hardcore. Crowdsurfers pepper the pit and beer and sweat hit faces as Iero and the crowd scream every word together. I’m told that it was Iero who insisted that the barricade be removed that night, to eliminate the barrier between band and fan.

The set included the full “Parachutes” album and most of “Stomaches”, as well as a handful of Iero’s solo songs, including “B.F.F.,” which was written by his six-year-old daughter. Their shows are a like a bloodfest of frenetic energy. The band moves so rapidly onstage, that all photographic attempts wind up blurs until they’re in between songs. Everyone’s hair is in their mouths and everyone’s voices are shot at the end of the set – both artist and aficionado.

Iero is a very adept songwriter and interesting performer, and this tour, in particular, is very well worth the trip, but if you can’t make it out, definitely check out “Parachutes,” it’s a total ass-kicker.

Another new track from the inimitable Cory Branan‘s upcoming solo album, Adios, is now available, and it’s a special one. It’s a rather positive number (especially by the Memphis-based Branan’s recent standards) and it features the likes of Laura Jane Grace and Dave Hause on backing vocals. Check it out here.

Adios is due out April 7th via Branan’s longtime label home, Bloodshot Records. We’ve had it on repeat for a couple weeks, and it kicks a lot of ass. Branan is in the midst of a nationwide tour in support of Adios – check out dates here.

Cory Branan’s last album, “The No Hit Wonder,” was released back in 2014.

I’d usually say, anything Dave Hause touches is pure gold, but that would seriously sell Cory Branan short on this one. The Richmond, Virginia-based singer/songwriter extraordinaire took on social injustice and police brutality beautifully in his new song ‘Another Nightmare In America‘ whilst The Loved Ones frontman came in more to give the track some extra layers.

‘Another Nightmare In America’ is one of the singles from Branan’s upcoming album ‘ADIOS’. You can give it a spin here.

In the handful of years since The Loved Ones went on their sort of indefinite hiatus (last year’s anniversary shows notwithstanding), Dave Hause hit the ground running as a solo artist, playing shows in the States and abroad as part of the Revival Tour or opening for acts like Alkaline Trio, Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, etc. He added his younger brother, Tim, to the mix on guitar and keyboards when it came time to tour in support of his sophomore album, Devour, four years ago, and the two spent several years touring and eventually writing and recording together since.

For the release of his third album, Bury Me In Philly (February 3rd, Rise Records), Hause has assembled a full band, dubbed The Mermaid, consisting of his brother on (mostly) lead guitar, Bad Religion’s Jay Bentley’s son, Miles, on bass, fellow East-Coaster-turned-Californian Kevin Conroy on drums, and the infinitely talented Kayleigh Goldsworthy on keys and guitars and backing vocals. Prior to heading to Europe for their first official tour as a collective unit, Dave Hause and his newly formed backing band, The Mermaid, played a handful of bi-coastal US record release shows in support of his third solo album, Bury Me In Philly . The shows marked the first-ever time that Hause has performed with a full band since going it alone in the post-Loved Ones years, a very clear — yet potentially nerve-wracking — “next step” in his trajectory as a solo artist. If show #6 as a group is any sign of what’s to come, that trajectory is going to take a marked upturn in the very near future.

The quintet scorched through a sixteen-song set to a sold out crowd upstairs at the legendary Cambridge, Massachusetts, Middle East nightclub last Friday. While tracks from Bury Me In Philly took center stage in the set list, Hause’s first two solo albums were well represented in their own respective rights. It’s fair (and perhaps understated) to say that whether as a solo performer or as the leader of the family duo, the elder Hause has always taken full command of whatever stage he’s graced, engaging the crowd and performing as a full-on, band-leading frontman regardless of the setting or the size of the venue. Part of this ability stems obviously from his punk rock days, but part of it was out of necessity, as his engaging passion and honest intensity as a performer kept him from becoming a dime-a-dozen acoustic-wielding solo performer. And while Hause performing solo (or with only Tim as his accompaniment) will always be compelling, watching The Mermaid in action felt like it was meant to be.

The band gelled quickly, with no obvious signs that they’d been playing together in public for what amounts to less than a calendar week. Conroy and Bentley kept the ship steady and pushed the tempo and Goldsworthy, and accomplished musician in her own right, made her almost constantly changing duties come across almost effortless. The formation of the full band has allowed the younger Hause to take over a more prominent role, and he seems to be truly cherishing it. Tim’s immense talent and youthful energy seem not only increasingly natural on stage but inspirational to his frontman older brother, who appears to be relishing his roles as band leader and big brother in equal parts. Having a capable band at his back allows Hause to finally give older songs like “C’Mon Kid” and “Melanin” and personal favorite “Autism Vaccine Blues” the sort of the sort of full, pedal-down justice they deserve, and the five-piece genuinely seem to be having fun performing with each other in the process.

Direct support on this night (and the rest of the brief East Coast run) was provided by Vapers, a New York-based four piece (officially, though there were five on this night) outfit of semi-mysterious origin. Co-fronted by a couple of familiar faces, “Spanish Maria” Correonero and “Uncle Bernard” (the latter of whom looks eerily similar to Hause’s bud and fellow Loved One David Walsh) and backed by a couple of current and/or former members of Morning Glory, the band play a fun brand of poppy, garagey alternative punk that, at least from a sonic perspective, owes as much to the gritty, post-punk New York City (think Sonic Youth) of a decade ago as it does to the lo-fi hipster punk of present day Williamsburg. The sound is a little bit muddy and angular by design, keeping the band from sounding redundant or formulaic. Fun stuff; check them out.

Local support on this night came from the mighty Rebuilder. I’m not entirely sure what else I can tell you about Rebuilder that I haven’t told you on these pages before, but they’re obviously my favorite band to come out of this part of the States in recent memory. While no doubt capable of commanding larger stages as will someday hopefully be the case, the five-piece certainly know what they’re doing in the role of local openers. The band got down to business quickly, ripping through eight songs with little downtime, perfectly filling their half-hour slot with a set tailored to the occasion. They ran through a couple of new songs from their upcoming EP, Songs From The Massachusetts Turnpike, that may be among the strongest songs they’ve written to date. Stay tuned for more on that…

…and head below for our full photo gallery from the sold-out, sweat-soaked evening!

As you may have learned in our recent lengthy interview with Philly-turned-Californian songwriter Dave Hause, it’s fixing to be a pretty busy year for him and his new backing band, The Mermaid (which features, among others, his brother Tim on guitars and Jay Bentley’s son Miles on bass). Today, we’re getting a peak at just what that entails.

Hause will kick off a few weeks of mostly Canadian tour dates on a co-headlining tour with The Bronx in Vancouver on April 4th. That run extends through April 15th in Ottawa, at which time the band will head south and join up with Frank Iero and the Patience in Brooklyn on April 18th for a US tour that runs until May 11th in San Francisco. Check out full details of all of the band’s aforementioned tour dates below.

Hause is touring in support of his stellar third full-length, “Bury Me In Philly,” which was released last Friday (February 3rd) on Rise Records.

Band Spotlight

I write this spotlight with mixed emotions. I'm stoked to have discovered a new band that I would love to sign to Dying Scene Records, but I'm f'ing pissed to not have discovered them early enough to have done so. The Stifled is a Baltimore foursome that just released their self-titled debut EP, and if I didn't know better I'd think this was Dying Scene Records band A Dying Regime partnered up with the singer from DS Records' first signing, Yankee Brutal. Skate punk with metallic undertones. Melodic vocals with a healthy dose of snarls and gang shouted backups. Fast and heavy. Catchy but angry. My sweet spot. Give the EP a spin here and compare it to a couple choice tracks from Yankee Brutal and A Dying Regime and tell me I'm wrong with this comparison.